


White Bee

by SkyHighDisco



Series: Grey Novelette [3]
Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Character Death, Friendship, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:09:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25575592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyHighDisco/pseuds/SkyHighDisco
Summary: Jeremy is eighty-three years old when he draws his last breath.
Relationships: Jeremy Clarkson & James May, Jeremy Clarkson & Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson & Richard Hammond & James May, Richard Hammond & James May
Series: Grey Novelette [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832563
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	White Bee

  
  


He is eighty-three years old when he drives his last breath.

It’s when his grip on Katya’s hand completely ceases and his chest stops rhythmically, shallowly rising and falling under Emily’s palm and it’s the moment James May’s worn-out, wrinkled bladder couldn’t hold anymore and he wasn’t there. It’s when Finlo drops to his knees on a hard floor with a loud bang and Richard Hammond releases a breath he’s been holding for the past two weeks.

Funeral arrangements are organized quickly, as it drew out and hung around for a while already, and during the time, the news spread worldwide like a plague.

Jeremy Clarkson, the TV icon, world’s greatest car presenter, passes at the age of 83.

Early, some would say, but it isn’t a big surprise, given the man had a long-term alliance with cigs and alcohol and other unnamed things, but it made it no less difficult or logical. Katya bursts into tears and Emily’s son Robert and Finlo’s son Charles are thankfully out of reach to start asking walking-on-eggshells questions.

The ceremony is restricted because as expected, behind the crowd control barriers are the vultures and behind them, at least twenty five to thirty thousand people in all directions, waiting to say the last farewell to the largest motoring-broadcasting icon the world will ever remember. It would be a solid walk through the Brookwood, slowed down by the limited path and desperate heat, but it will be crossed.

Hammond and May are right behind the casket. Then goes his family; children, grandchildren and relatives, followed by close family friends including Mindy, Izzy and Willow, and Sarah Frater as well.

It’s a schedule they didn’t plan, but conducted as per Clarkson’s will in which he felt obliged to specify everything, and that included funeral walk set.

Cheeky sod.

Hammond's jaw is set firmly. He has red splotches on his cheeks, his eyes are puffy and his nose is swollen. His silver hair is, for once, lifeless, being tousled about by the wind, but he straightens up his back as much as his sore spine would allow him.

May is right by his side. He is ostensibly another story. He looks grim and on the verge of falling apart, nowhere near as pretending he can look proud. He is unshaven and his glasses are two large convex aquarium bowls, but he trudges along without complaining and he has no intent to start. It’s the last thing on his mind.

Their bodies are too worn out, too fragile, like rusted iron, to be carrying the coffin. Finlo and Jeremy’s sons-in-law fill this role, but Richard cannot let it slip without at least putting his hand on the smooth wooden surface to feel at least a little more that he is in some sort of physical contact with Jeremy. While the rest of the ceremony, save for the priest, are all in black, Hammond and May are wearing bright white button-ups, sticking out like two sore thumbs.

It wasn’t their idea. It was another demanded segment from Clarkson’s stupid will. _‘Worship me like you always have, losers’_ is scribbled inbetween the brackets on the worn-out paper that any museum would give their best exhibits for.

Richard only thinks about a promise he and Jeremy had agreed on years ago. Jeremy must now be bargaining with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and demanding his James May Poo-Time back. He almost wants to laugh, then remembers that the only person he’d genuinely be able to share that joke with is in this coffin and then he almost cries. Again.

James hurts all over. And he is bloody hot. Why did the selfish sod have to die in the middle of the summer? Once May has gone after him, there is not a thing he won’t do to him. He is thankful the carriers are moving slowly and his cane makes a blunt sound every time it comes to contact with the ground. It’s repetitive and impossibly rhythmic, and it fills his ears like a metronome standing on his piano when he’s been practicing Bach in older days.

Suddenly there is a stop. They have to turn to a narrower pathway to reach the place they are going to put him. Photography clicks go unheard by all members of the parade. James cannot bring himself to care anymore, but he is grateful that Jeremy has at least had his privacy in the mortuary.

There is an outstretched hand, waiting for James invitingly. He doesn’t need to follow its length to the face to know whom it belongs to. He’d known that hand for nearly forty years, would keep on knowing it no matter how old it would get. 

Still, he looks up. Meets Richard’s old, old eyes. 

Richard smiles; it wrinkles his face. The smile says, ‘You can, but you don’t have to. It’s alright.’

James stares. His glasses aren’t even helpful anymore. Cock, he is almost blind. But Richard is an incised hieroglyph engraved so clearly into his retina that he doesn’t need to see him anymore.

So he lifts his own hand (a very shaking hand) and clasps Richard’s firmly. It isn’t a full hold. It’s a hold of each other’s fingers. But it’s just enough. Solid. Promising. Strong.

He doesn’t let go until the casket is in the ground.

  
  


“You alright?” Richard asks.

His face is clear now. His skin has gotten back its colour, though not quite got rid of traces of emotional exhaustion. But he still looks like the most handsome bastard among the three of them and it will have never changed.

James sniffs dismissively, watching a group of ducks glide across the lake and they look like miniature canoes. He has a distinct memory of when Katya was little and laughed when he made that comparison. “I think I’ll cry at home”, he decides.

Hammond nods. “That’s completely alright.” His voice alone is so gentle and understanding that James is very, very nearly there to go over the brim.

Instead…

“Hammond, I…” he says in his raspy voice dehydrated of colour. He trails off. His throat is a tightened coiled spring. It’s a barrier he’s never quite bulldozed over and he’ll take it to his own grave someday. If it was anybody else, he might be able to, but it’s not. It never was.

And his friend isn’t anybody else.

“I know”, Richard says. There is a convex ridge of exposed skin on the top of his head, though not as remotely close as Jeremy’s had been for the last thirty years of his life. And it’s still holding on, though he’s ceased dyeing it, to May’s utter relief. Now he says he feels like Michael Douglas. James tells him he looks like Joe Pesci.

“I know…”

In the distance there is a cavorting cry of grandsons chasing each other on a nice summer day; a sonic beacon for new generations to come.

“…I love you, too.”

James looks at him again. A grateful smile frisks around his lips. Thankful smile, that Richard mouthed what he couldn’t. It was never difficult for Richard to say it. And thankful how he completes his thoughts like lego pieces. Of whose hive structure they now lack one builder, but it is fine because it had long ago been completed and perfected.

“And so does he”, Hammond adds, looking off at the water.

They sit there, two old men on a wooden shaded bench overseeing the lake. They haven’t been this close in a long time, not even when Jeremy’s condition turned so sour so quickly. But it feels right. Nostalgic. There isn’t a breath of indecision hovering between them. They simply hold on. 

And if they looked back to their numerous adventures, and those didn’t just apply to the epic journeys around the world, despite disagreements, arguing, accidents, near-death experiences, unpleasantnesses, death-threats, fuck-offs, despite never openly admitting how fiercely they held their love, appreciation and need for each other, they mutely admitted to themselves then and there, that they have had the best lives they could’ve ever dreamed of.

Wind ripples the water.

Sun finally dips between the trees.

Time to go home.

.

  
  


.

Jeremy is weightless.

He doesn’t have his body anymore. It’s not even zero gravity because he doesn’t feel the need to mind where he is floating to and what to shield himself from. He knows there is nothing to protect.

But the most beautiful news is that the pain is gone. In his back, neck, joints, chest, head, heart, soul… He doesn’t feel anything, not even his weight. He is completely free, like he had just broken free from the oval prison of the egg shell. His head is rid of worries he cannot even recall anymore. The black dog will not sink its teeth into him ever again.

However, he is confused at first because he sees nothing. Hears nothing. Feels nothing. He doesn’t exist. He is only aware. But he isn’t frightened or panicking because he can’t remember what those are supposed to mean. He only feels this persistent, childish curiosity.

Before a tiny white dot appears in front of him. Jeremy fixates on it, guilelessly excited. He is vibrating when it starts to spread and whoops when it lastly explodes, spreading the nebulous clouds of the most magnificent explosion of the strongest light he has ever experienced. 

And then Jeremy sees it. Blinded by the beaming light brighter than the Sun, an apparition descends from the mist composed of pure starlight adorned in the vestments of the same nature. For what Jeremy’s mortal eye can distinguish, enveloped in sort of awe-like petrifaction, it has the appearance of a white bee with the body coated into bright white mist; the softest fur his imagination can probably grasp the concept of, brushed with lines of golden stripes over its abdomen glittering like no earth-bound gold excavated from the oldest cave ever could. The eyes glitter and slosh like a lake of molten gold, the surface of the Sun, but what completely obscures Jeremy’s conception of ability to describe are what he would in best case name wings. They are a fluttery, wavy protuberance of something between clothes of silk and fresh morning mist combined into the mix with whips of shape-altering water not unlike a spray thrown out of a bucket. The only reason why he names them wings is because they certainly move like one. Up and down in slow, magnificent arches. It is when his eyes begin to hurt and he resists the need to shield his face with his arms because what he’s seeing is so, so _beautiful_.

Jeremy smiles broadly. It's a smile of relief, love, and purity. Crow feet-inducing, dimple-drilling, eye-wrinkling smile. He loves how it feels and never wants to stop smiling again.

He holds out his arms. He holds his arms out invitingly the way he would to his children, to his girlfriend, his wife, to his friends and their wives and other halves. He holds his arms out in a way he had greeted Richard back to the hangar in 2007. The way he, off-set, inquired James after a head-bang in Syria in 2010. The way he welcomed his children, worshiped his wife, venerated nature, adored life. That, and much more. 

He gives his heart away in those outstretched hands.

_Come_

the voice says. It's all around him. It's in him. It's gentler than silk and softer than new hoar. It caresses his eardrums in such a loving way he wishes to cry. 

But he somehow knows that he never has to cry again. That he is finally closer to home than he ever was before.

This is his final ride.

And it will be alright. Everybody will be alright. 

They will be reunited again. And they will drive together, down uncountable infinite roads.

Forever.

_Come_

it whispers again. A flower petal in the spring of light. Confirming his thoughts.

_Time to go home._

The being of light reaches him.

It wraps its wings around him. A vortex of eternity.

Jeremy is finally one with light.


End file.
